Bacon, Zucchini and Butter Bean Pasta

So I told you yesterday that I am currently doing a stock take of my pantry and freezer and using up bits and pieces that I have lying around.

One such item was several cans of butter beans. My pantry is always pretty well stocked with beans, pulses and diced tomatoes. They are the base to a lot of our dinners. But it seems that we have recently accumulated a large amount of butter beans for some reason.

Anyway, this quick and easy pasta sure helped reduce the quantity of butter beans in the pantry.

Ingredients:

2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tbs of olive oil
4 rashers of bacon
1 large zucchini
italian herbs
1 can of butter beans
1 cup of uncooked pasta of your choice.
parmasen cheese
salt and pepper

You could add onion too, I just didn't have any on hand.

Method:

Boil water and cook pasta as per packet directions.

Heat oil in frying pan and add diced bacon. Fry off for a few minutes then add garlic and zucchini.

Continue to cook for a few minutes and then add tomatoes. Bring to a gentle simmer. Add butter beans. You just want to heat the butter beans through.

Add cooked pasta and stir through.

Season with salt and pepper and parmesan cheese to serve.

What item do you always have lots of in your pantry?

The Great Sourdough Experiment of 2013

If you follow me on Instagram would would have been privy to daily snaps of my sourdough starter, sorry about that.

But I'm excited by it!

For the sourdough starter I did the following:
Day 1: 1/4 cup of water and 1/4 cup of flour into a clean jar. I did not secure a lid to it at all.
Day 2: Add 1/4 cup of water and 1/4 cup of flour to the previous days mixture
Day 3: Add 1/4 cup of water and 1/4 cup of flour to the previous days mixture
Day 4: Add 1/4 cup of water and 1/4 cup of flour to the previous days mixture
Day 5: Add 1/4 cup of water and 1/4 cup of flour to the previous days mixture
Day 6: Add 1/4 cup of water and 1/4 cup of flour to the previous days mixture
Day 7: Discard all but 1/4 cup of mixture and feed 2/3 cup of flour and 2/3 cup of water to starter and stir well.

So yesterday was day 7. I discarded the mixture and fed it in the morning and then last night I made the dough.


And I woke this morning to find that it did actually rise!

I was planning on baking it in a cast iron pot, but B has been complaining about the bread not being the 'right' shape...

So this is how it looked when I put it in the bread tin before it's second rising time.

 And this is how it looked fresh out of the oven.

And it tastes amazing, if I do say so myself!

I used this recipe from The Stone Soup. After I made my dough, I fed the starter again with 2/3 cup of flour and 2/3 cup of water to beef it up for my next loaf. From now on I will just be feeding it with 1/4 cup of both water and flour daily. We are going away soon too, so when we do I will just be refrigerating it so that it doesn't die while I'm not feeding it.

Along with The Stone Soup, I used this post from Inner Pickle when I was starting out with my starter.

And here is a pic of my starter today-

Are you a fan of Sourdough? Does the thought of making it yourself scare you?

It did scare me up until this morning, now that I've actually done it, I can't wait to do it all again. 

Daily bread

About a fortnight ago I finally decided to start baking all of our own bread again. It was triggered by buying yet another less than stella loaf from our one and only supermarket. We have no bakery here or any other options for shopping.

The bread that is sold in our supermarket is flown up from Perth to the airport which is an hour away in another town. It is then picked up by a ute and driven back to town while being baked all over again in the hot sun in the back of said ute.

So really it was an easy choice, I have been trialing a few ways to make and bake the bread. I tried out a new recipe in my thermomix, 

I have also been playing with a no knead bread

and finally I decided that now would be as good a time as any to try sourdough and make my own starter.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 4

So far the starter is going well. I can't wait to bake my first loaf of sourdough.

Do you bake bread?

One BIG Pot of Lentils

I probably make a variation of this at least once a fortnight. It feeds us over several nights and one pot can turn into several different meal types.


This pot for example was served with spaghetti on the first night and then was turned into lasange for the second and third night.

You can change the seasoning up a bit and serve it on tortillas, flat bread, tacos, potatoes. The possibilities are endless.

This isn't a recipe as such, but a meal suggestion. Play with it and create your own winning combo.

Ingredients:

2 cups of red lentils (rinsed)
vegetables of your choice- In this post I used 1 red capsicum, 2 carrot, 2 stalks of celery, broccoli, 1 zucchini
salt
pepper
tinned tomatoes
basil
oregano
parsley

Add 2 cups of lentils to a large pot and cover with water, bring to boil and reduce heat to a simmer.

Puree (or thinly slice if you can't puree them) vegetables

Add vegetables, tinned tomatoes (or fresh if you have them available), herbs and seasoning and cook on a low heat for several hours.

This dish is great for meat eaters too. I never tell the kids that they are eating lentils and they are none the wisher. B didn't notice in the beginning either. 

You could use taco seasoning instead of the basil/oregano/parsley combo. The possibilities are endless.

I'm linking up with Veggie Mama for Meatless Monday

Linseed, Oats, Honey and Chia Loaf

This loaf all came about because I went shopping on Monday morning and the shelves were completely empty of any kind of fresh items in our one and only supermarket. It was then and there that I decided that I really needed to start making my own bread again (and get a crack on adding more things to our vegetable garden).

I really want to try my hand at making sourdough, but that takes time to build up the starter etc so I was flipping through my Everyday Recipe book that came with my Thermomix and came across a Five Seed Bread recipe.

Now, I don't have five different seeds in my pantry, but I did have Oats, Linseed Meal and Chia Seeds. So I adjusted the recipe to suit what I had.

You don't need a Thermomix to make this bread. You could use a bread maker or just your two hands.

Ingredients

500g Unbleached plain flour
120g Oats
2 tsp dry Yeast
1 tsp Salt
60g Linseed Meal
50g Chia Seeds
30g Honey
30g Oil
500g of lukewarm Water



Mix all ingredients by whatever means you are using.

In my Thermomix I used the interval speed for 2 1/2 minutes. If doing my hand, I would give it a good knead for at least 5 minutes or until I was happy with the dough.

This is a sticky mixture so don't stress if you are worried about the consistency of the dough.

Grease a 20cm square baking tin and pour the mixture into it to rise. We have ducted air conditioning in our house so I have to heat my oven to about 50-60 degrees for about 15 minutes then turn it off to create a suitable environment for the bread to rise. As soon as I turn the oven off I pop the tray of bread dough in the heated oven (make sure it is turned off though, we don't want to start cooking this loaf yet!) and let the dough rise to fill the pan. It will take about 25-30 minutes.

Once it has risen turn your oven onto 200 degrees Celsius and bake your bread for about 40-45 minutes.

Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool. This is important because if you leave it in the baking pan the bottom will sweat.

DO NOT CUT THE LOAF WHILE IT IS STILL HOT. It is still cooking on the inside and if you cut it too soon it will collapse.

Once it is sufficiently cooled, slice and enjoy.

If you try your hand at baking this bread, please let me know how you went and what you thought.

31 Days of Smoothies

Over the next 31 days I am going to be sharing 31 Smoothie recipes as I create, try and tweak them to make them just right. 

There will be fruit smoothies, vege smoothies and a variety of both. I love smoothies as my breakfast food. 

I can't usually stomach breakfast (I am so not a morning person!) but found that if I had it in a liquid form it was able to consistently have a filling and quick breakfast to start my day. 

Not to mention that my kids love pretty much all of these smoothies too. So that means I am able to up their fruit and vege intake without them even realising. 

I hope you join me on this journey and maybe even share some of your favourite smoothie recipes. 

Day 1 starts tomorrow! 




Please remember that I am NOT a nutritionist or dietitian, nor do I have any experience in these fields. These are just recipes that we enjoy in this house. 

 Edit: For all Smoothie recipes click here.

Eating from the pantry

So because of the big move we are decluttering (again) and having to deplete our pantry stocks. Truthfully would could probably survive on the food in our pantry for months. There are enough beans, lentils, rice, pasta and oats to last that long anyway. But now we have too. So it is creative dinners all the way here.

We have been eating:

taco bean wraps
chick pea curry and rice
risotto
baked beans
stirfrys
pastas
lentil sauces and cous cous
And various other wrap fillings.

I have also made a HUGE batch of granola from all the rolled oats I found in the pantry.

Could you live from your pantry for months?

What dinners could you create? 

Gourmet Garden Blog Off: Basil and Bacon Pasta

Some nights I only have a few minutes to get dinner cooked and on the table and since I had some yummy gourmet garden herbs at my disposal this week I thought I would give them a whirl and make a quick (and cheap) pasta dish for us all.

Ingredients:
Onion
4 rashers bacon
300-500g pasta (depending on how many you are feeding)
1 tablespoon Gourmet Garden Chunky Garlic
1 tablespoon Gourmet Garden Basil
800g tinned tomatoes
Olive Oil

Dice bacon and onion. Heat small amount of oil in pan and add onion and 1 tablespoon of Gourmet Garden Chunky Garlic once oil is hot. Cook onion until it turns translucent and then add in bacon. Once bacon has cooked through pour in tinned tomatoes and tablespoon of Gourmet Garden Basil. Bring to boil and then let simmer for 5-10 minutes.

Whilst you are doing all the above put water on to boil for the spaghetti. Once the spaghetti is cooked add to the pasta sauce and mix through.

Now it is ready to serve!

These quantities were enough to feed our family of 5 and have 2 portions of left overs to freeze for lunches.

Living Simply, Living Deliberately

I wrote about my dreams for the future a little back here and here, but really I want to live a simple as possible now too and have recently started reading a wonderful book called Down to Earth by Rhonda Hetzel.

It is full of some wonderful resources and some great ideas on how everyone can live a little simpler in their everyday life.

Do you dream of a simple life?

P.S This isn't a sponsored post. I am just really enjoying this book.

Frugal Living: Homemade Laundry Powder

Last year I was lucky enough to win a years supply of Radiant Laundry liquid. And yes, I did just express joy in winning laundry liquid. I think is was a pretty great prize to win!

But last week we used up our final bottle of our winnings, one month short of the 'years supply' timeline.

So it was time to make some more homemade laundry powder.

Below is the recipe I used. And so far, so good. We did a lot of washing over the weekend and all clothes have come up great.

You will need:

3 cups Borax
2 cups Baking Soda
2 cups Washing Soda (Sodium Carbonate, it is pH increaser in the photo. I pick it up from the pool shop for about $6 for a bag)
2 cups Sunlight soap (grated)

• Mix all ingredients well and store in a sealed tub or jar.
• Use 1/8 cup of powder per full load.
• Pop a label on it is you so desire.

I have a front loader and have been putting it in with the clothes as it doesn't seem to all dissolve when it is in the dispenser.

Oh, a few of you asked if I could convert the Best Coconut Butter Cake recipe for non-thermomix owners. I am planning on doing it soon and will update the post as soon as I do.

Meal Ideas: Pasta E Fagioli #thermomix

I'll never be a food photographer!

Ingredients

Parmesan Cheese (to serve if desired) cubed if using the thermomix or grated if not.
1 small red chili
1 clove of garlic
1/2 onion
50g olive oil
1 Celery stalk, roughly chopped including leaves
2 cans of Bortotti or Cannellini Beans, drained (I used Cannellini)
2 Tomatoes
2 tbsp of TM Vegetable Stock
9900g Water
300g small pasta (Ditali or Macaroni)

Method:

1. Place Parmesan cheese into TM bowl and grate for 10 seconds on speed 9. Set aside
2. Place Chili, garlic and onion into TM bowl and chop for 3 seconds on speed 7.
3. Scrape from sides of bowl using spatula.
4. Add oil and sauté for 2 minutes at 100 degrees Celsius on speed 1
5. Add celery with leaves, 1 can of beans, tomatoes and stock then pulverise for 15-20 seconds on speed 6
6. Add water and cook for 10 minutes at 100 degree Celsius on speed 1.
7. Add pasta and second can of beans then cook for 10 minutes at 100 degrees on Reverse + soft speed.
8. Serve the pasta in a bowl and sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese. 

This recipe is easy to convert if you don't have a Thermomix. You can do step two in a blender/food processor or by hand. Then transfer to pot to sauté. Again you can use a blender/food processor or stick blender for step 5. Then simply bring mix to boil and add in pasta and second can of beans. Once pasta is cooked, it is ready to serve.

I Baked: Buttermilk Bread

Have I told you that I love my Thermomix yet? Well I do! In a big way. I now understand all of the hype and we have been getting to know each other a lot over the past few days.

On Saturday, I decided to have a go at making butter and in less than 4 minutes I had results of a nice creamy butter and buttermilk also.

Instead of putting the buttermilk in the fridge for later I decided to give the Buttermilk Bread recipe from the Everyday Cook book a whirl.

I know... I'll never be a food photographer!

Ingredients:
180g Buttermilk (at room temperature)
200g lukewarm Water
1 sachet dry yeast or 20g fresh yeast
1tsp Salt
500g Bakers Flour
20g oil or Melted Butter

Method:
Place all ingredients in TM bowl in the above order and mix for 5 seconds on speed 7.
Set dial to closed lid position. Knead for 3 minutes on Interval Speed.

Rub a little oil into the palms of your hands and remove dough from bowl.
Set aside in a warm place or allow to prove in the oven set to 50 degrees for 30 minutes.
Knead slightly then shape dough into loaf form and set aside again until it has rise to double size.
Place on try and bake in oven for 45 minutes at 200 degrees.

If you don't have a Thermomix, simply combine all ingredients in a bowl using a butter knife to incorporate them well and knead with your hands once the ingredients are combine. Prove the dough for around 3 minutes and then knead slightly and place in loaf tins or make a loaf shape on an oven try and allow it to double in size. Then bake in 45 minutes at 200 degrees.

I divided my dough and placed in two loaf tins to bake. And Viola`

Budgeting= The Bane of My Existence.

In our household, it is my responsibility to handle all our incomings and outgoings. It is something I hate having the full responsibility for, but as much as I try to include B he just doesn't get it. So at the moment he just asks how much he has to spend per week and my response is usually nothing...

Well not always, but with me currently being a stay at home mum that is kinda how it is working...

Some things we I do to keep the budget in check are:

• Menu Plan and create a shopping list from things (and stick to it)
• We use cloth nappies
• I was making my own laundry powder for a while, but this year I was lucky enough to win a years supply of Radiant through Digital Parents
• Use Vinegar and Bi-carb to clean with
• Bake snacks instead of buying them
• Make a lot of things from scratch eg.bread and yoghurt

When planning our meals I like to see how far I can stretch say a Roast Chicken. So for example our Meal Plan could look like this:

• Sunday- Roast Chicken and Vege
• Monday- Chicken and Corn Casserole using leftover chicken

Then on Monday I would also use the chicken carcass to make a stock and either freeze it if we are over chicken by that stage or make chicken and vegetable soup on Tuesday.

We are also a fan of lentils in this house. I love them because everyone is getting their protein and they are cheap, cheap, cheap. And well B loves them because they make him, well fart... all together now EWWWW! Yes, he is childish like that!

At the moment our goals are to pay off our credit card (yes we have one of those evil things!), and to pay as much of our mortgage in the next 5 years that we can. It is our goal to purchase another property at that stage and keep this one as an investment.

To do this I have to create a wizz bang super dupper budget AND stick to it as I don't plan on working much in the next 5 years. Ethan will only be in grade 1 by then and I would still like to be more at home with them than at work. So that there in itself is my motivation for sticking to the new budget that is currently being drafted.

What things do you that save you money? Do you budget or do you just wing it? Do you have any tips to share?


I am wanting to follow up on this topic in the next few weeks, so if you have any tips you would like to share I would love to include them in the follow up post.

{image source: weheartit}

Frugal Feasts: Quiche

As I have told you before, when it comes to savoury dishes, I hardly ever follow a recipe, I just throw stuff in and hope for the best. And well I baked this version of my quiche recipe last week and thought I would share.

Quiches are a regular at our place, not only they are quick, but they are cheap. Two things I like in a meal.

Depending on my time constraints, I either make my own pastry or whip out whatever pastry I have in the freezer. Be it pre-package puff or shortcrust pastry. Either work a treat, and the kids love the it regardless of what pastry I use. For this example I am using both Short crust and Puff Pastry (I only had one sheet of short crust left...)


If using pre-packaged sheets, be sure to get them out of the freezer first so they defrost enough in time.

First off dice the following and fry off in a pan until onion is transparent.

4 Rashers of Bacon
1 Brown Onion

Whilst your onion and bacon is cooking combine the following ingredients in a bowl.

3 Eggs
1 tin of Corn- drained
Parsley/Chives,  or whatever herbs you have on hand- I used chives yesterday.
300ml Cream
1/2 cup milk
1 cup grated Grated Cheese- I used tasty

 Once onion and bacon has cooled enough as to bowl of above ingredients and combine well. (To be completely honest sometimes I skip cooking the bacon and onion and just add them all to the raw ingredients, no one has died...)

Preheat over to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease quiche or muffin tins and line with pastry. You can blind bake your pastry at this point, or be lazy like me and skip to the following step.

Pour into prepared quiche tin. I doubled this recipe yesterday and used 2x 6 hole muffin tins and one large quiche tin. Bake for approx at 180 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until the egg is cooked through....

Do you follow all the rules when baking quiches? Do you always blind bake your pastry? Do you always pre-cook your bacon and onions? Or do you cheat like me??

Frugal Feasts- Pasta Carbonara

We are trying to keep our grocery budget down at the moment (well always) and have been religiously working off a fortnightly menu plan and Pasta Carbonara has been getting a look in pretty much every week, not only is it easy to whip up, the kids all eat it with gusto AND it's cheap.

Ingredients:

Be warned I hardly measure when I am cooking a savoury dish... adjust the measurements to suit your family.

1-2 tsp Garlic- I use minced garlic from a jar
1 Onion
3-4 rashers of bacon
1 Cup chopped Mushrooms
300ml of thickened creamream
Parmesan Cheese
1 Egg
Spaghetti or Fettuccine Pasta

Cut up onions, bacon and mushroom and fry in a frying pan. Whilst they are cooking combine cream and an egg in a bowl. Season the cream to your liking. Once the onions, bacon and mushrooms are cooked add cream and let simmer... Don't let the cream boil. While all this is going on bring a saucepan of salted water to boil and cook spaghetti. Once spaghetti is cooked drain and add to the fry pan with your sauce and top with Parmesan Cheese. Mix well and serve.

See isn't that super quick and easy! You can omit the egg if you like. I just like how it thickens the cream and gives it a bit more texture.

Do you have a frugal meal you can share with us???

Note: photo to come. B ate went back for seconds before I could get a photo

Aunt Clara's Peas and Pasta

Have you heard about Aunt Clara? She is one of YouTube's most popular chef. Her 10 episode series was called Depression Cooking with Clara. We have tried a few of her recipes and Peas and Pasta has been a hit several times. Hubby actually requests it frequently. This recipe is so simple and so so cheap.

If you do try this recipe pretty please report back and let me know how you went.